Time to Go Nuclear

I am not sure I gave much thought to nuclear power before 1979, when the accident at Three Mile Island made environmental apathy impossible—or, at least, detestable. But there are few more obvious signs that the world is moving in the wrong direction than an event that threatens to despoil the planet forever. To be for nuclear power after Three Mile Island (and, even worse, after the accident at Chernobyl, in 1986) was to be for corporations; for lying, callous governments; and for the inane notion that the benefits of new technologies always outweigh the risks. Nuclear power just wasn’t nature’s way, and who can be against nature?

That, to bend a phrase of Bill Clinton’s, depends on what the nature of nature is. If nature means continuing to melt the globe by wantonly burning fossil fuels; or encouraging the increased consumption of beef (which requires land, water, and space we long ago used up); or assuming that our planet will be capable of sustaining ten billion people in just a few decades; or even attempting to cool the earth by altering the fundamental character of its climate, then it might be time to reassess.

Still, I had not altered my position on nuclear power until last week, when I watched Robert Stone’s new documentary, “Pandora’s Promise.” The film follows several former dedicated opponents as they come to realize, based on their examination of the evidence, that nuclear reactors may provide the best—and perhaps even the safest—option that we have to power our planet. The liberal (and environmental) credentials of the protagonists are beyond dispute: among them are Richard Rhodes, whose book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is by far the best history of the impact of nuclear weapons on society, and Stewart Brand, whose Whole Earth Catalog helped define environmentalism and redefine the goals of a generation.

“Pandora’s Promise” makes the point that the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and, two years ago, Fukushima, horrifying as each was, were all caused by the same flaw: an inadequate cooling system. The film walks us through the way that reactors can now be engineered to shut themselves down before the cooling system becomes unable to do its job. Moreover, the newest reactors are capable of recycling their own waste. Most documentaries that are made to promote a particular position are strident and dismissive of any other approach. Stone and the people he focusses on are not afraid to display their ambivalence. That makes their decisions even more powerful. The film starts in Fukushima, a year after the disaster there. We watch as the environmental activist Mark Lynas struggles with his choices, finally conceding that nuclear safety has improved dramatically in the past three decades. (I have written about Lynas before. He was one of the earliest and most violent protesters against genetically modified products, ripping up British test fields with abandon, until he came, little by little, to understand that in a war against climate change, not to mention poverty, biotechnology isn’t the enemy.)

Early in the film, we see footage of a brilliant but often forgotten speech, delivered in 1989, about the potential effect of global warming. “That prospect is a new factor in human affairs,’’ the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told the United Nations General Assembly. “Its results could be more far reaching than those of splitting the atom. We can’t just do nothing.” Ah, but we can, and we have. (And, while it’s fair to blame Thatcher’s beloved Conservative denialists for inaction and worse, the Clinton Administration, with its marquee environmentalist as Vice-President, did not demonstrate useful leadership on the issue, nor, so far, has the Obama Administration.)

At one point in the movie, a protester is shown screaming about the horrors of a nuclear world: “It is killing people and it will for the rest of time!” Possibly. But so will cars, bicycles, and organic bean sprouts. Nobody died at Three Mile Island, and there is scant evidence that the leak there—terrible as it was—increased risks of cancer for any group. Chernobyl was worse than Three Mile Island, obviously, and so was the accident at Fukushima.

But life is about choices, and we need to make one. We can let our ideals suffocate us or we can survive. Being opposed to nuclear power, as Rhodes points out, means being in favor of burning fossil fuel. It’s that simple. Nuclear energy—now in its fourth generation—is at least as safe as any other form of power. Fukushima was a disaster, but was it worse than the fact that our atmosphere now contains more than four hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide, a figure that many climate scientists believe assures catastrophe? Sadly, we may soon find out.

It would be different if we had alternatives. We do not—at least, not alternatives that will be scaled up and effective in time to serve the billions of people who will need power in the coming years. The film suggest that we are on the verge of a new movement, one that will permit nuclear power to provide enough energy to help ten billion people enjoy life on this impossibly crowded planet. I would like to share the optimism, but it isn’t easy.

When Mark Lynas worked with the radical environmental group EarthFirst, their slogan was “No compromise in the defense of Mother Earth.” All they would have needed to do to make that slogan work was to drop the word “no.” This film ought to make anyone who sees it realize that it is not too late for compromise. But we are getting awfully close.

Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998, and has written frequently about AIDS, T.B., and malaria in the developing world, as well as about agricultural biotechnology, avian influenza, the world’s diminishing freshwater resources, and synthetic biology.